How To Setup A Blog And Make Money Blogging

How To Make Money Blogging: 

If you are like me you’ve seen a lot of headlines online about making money blogging. Who doesn’t want to make additional income doing something they enjoy that is time and location independent, right?

But is it for real? Yes. Very real.
What can you do with this extra money you are making on the side?
-Pay off student loans
-Pay off debt
-Save for a home
-Pay for a private school for the kids
-Buy a new car
-Travel

The opportunities are endless.
Before we go any further I promised proof that I know what I am talking about so below is a screenshot from one of my Adsense accounts in regards to a site I recently launched. Below is the launch and 90 day earning summary for one site I launched last year that focused on food:



What would it feel like if you had an extra few hundred per month?
I’ll tell you. It feels awesome.

We live in a great time in history. The internet can work for anyone.

If you get a blog setup and are willing to put in the time and effort, it can become some serious income. Many bloggers we work with make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. (Here is another example from SuperMommyClub.com).

Here we go:

4 Key Steps in launching your own blog :

1. Setup A Blog With Hosting

To setup a Blog you need a host (where the site lives) and a domain name.  Setting up a blog nowadays is super easy and costs very little – especially with the host we use – BlueHost (To help I’ve put together a more thorough step by step walkthrough here: How to setup WordPress Blog on Bluehost :) )

For Your Domain Name – Pick something easy and memorable. This doesn’t have to be a premium one word dot com but it does have to give people an idea of what you are about when they look at it.

Check what is available here:

Plus, right now BlueHost has a ton of specials on setting up a website.
Hosting- There are a lot of hosts out there but I’m a big fan of BlueHost. They are super affordable (like $5.95/month) and have great support. A host is where you website and content will “live”. It’s where the actual files are located that people will access – articles to read, images,etc.



With Bluehost you are going to be able to install WordPress ( a blogging platform) at no additional cost. The reason I recommend WordPress is because it is so easy to learn and there is a lot of documentation online and on YouTube if you get stuck or need training. Plus you can find amazing themes already prebuilt for around $50 on ThemeForest.net instead of spending $2,500 to have someone build it from scratch.

(To help here is a technical link I put together to help you step by step the entire way: How to setup WordPress on Bluehost :) )

2. Signup for Adsense

Adsense can be a gold mine for bloggers because as soon as you get signed up and approved, is starts running advertisers. All you need is a gmail account, personal info and a bank account.

You can sign up here: www.google.com/adsense

The key for Adsense is placement. Remember a lot of people are browsing on their mobile phone and ads on the top or sidebar don’t get shown. Make sure you put ads in the middle of your web page like this:
I have found one of the best performing zone sizes on blogs is a square adzone.

3. SIGNUP FOR GOOGLE ANalytics

This is a free Google tool (you can signup here )and extremely powerful. It is how you will measure exactly how many people are going to your website. By using this tool you will know how many people are going to your blog, where they are coming from and what they are reading plus a ton more data. Use this to your advantage – if you know people are most interested in your blogs on home improvement, write more home improvement blogs, etc. The more you provide that your readers want the more they will read. Below is a screenshot from one of our sites that has over 1 million visitors per month.

 

4. Find a social platform that has an audience you can write to.

Just a heads up, these tactics are for advanced users. Those who have setup their blog, have content and are ready to go.

A lot of websites and individuals write content (blogs, articles,etc.) and publish them but have no idea how to put them in front of people who will actually read them. They just go out online and get lost in web space. I’ve found a lot of success in finding a niche that you understand and can be an authority in – moms with toddlers, car enthusiasts, adults with ADD,etc. and use that as your starting platform.

The next step is to then find people that would most likely be interested in what you are writing. Social media is a perfect tool for finding potential readers. Here are some of my tips for the ones I use:


Facebook 
-Join Facebook groups who have individuals that would be interested in what you are writing about and share your articles there.

-Reach out to Facebook page owners with topics and followers that would be interested in what you are writing about and try to get them to share your content across their pages.

-Start a Facebook page and start running “like” ads to build up your followers. (Great info from AdEspresso here). We believe in this – we currently have 80 Facebook pages we run with over 8.5M fans! (Link to pages).


Pinterest
-Look for group boards you can join that have followers that you can pin your content too.

-Create a Pinterest profile and pin high quality content that will attract the type of people that would love to read your blog. We have over 200k followers for our site LifeAsMama.com that caters to moms and I currently have over 996k followers on my personal profile of people that are into the stuff I am.